The problem I have with the majority of anti-immigration advocates is that there are often strong nationalist, xenophobic, and ethnocentric underpinnings to this stance. Yes, there are legitimate concerns with national security and law enforcement that come in to play, but all too often I hear people complaining about the increasing cultural diversity as if America has always been static and English is the only language that should be spoken in a civilized country.

As a Christian, I worship a God that is calling all peoples to Himself. America is not the new Israel, a nation chosen by God in some special way. Yes, God has blessed America, and I am incredibly thankful to have been born here. However, my citizenship is ultimately in heaven and that is where my true allegiance lies. This influences how I view American foreign policy.

I’m excited to live in a place where the nations are coming to us. The American church has the blessing of being able to reach out to individuals who come from places where they would never have heard the Gospel. I never want to be a part of a local church that does not welcome “outsiders” whether openly or by simply by ignoring them.

I generally agree with the ideas I’ve heard about the latest immigration bill, but I’m not willing to support it outright without knowing the details. While I don’t like the fact that there is a huge number of immigrants who have entered our country by breaking the laws, I’m not going to push them out. They are no more or less important than anyone else.

The issue of immigration is where my love of rule-following and my love of all people come at odds with each other, but I’m okay with that. I know which one will come out on top.

Originally posted 5/18/2007

I love blogging and rarely need a break, but when the thought of writing a blog post was a burden, I knew I needed a breather. While I did briefly considered quitting altogether, I realized that’s not what I wanted. I did want to continue, but I didn’t want to give you all filler until I was ready to write a “real” post again.

So, let’s move on to a “real” post, shall we?

I’m giving up television for the month of April.

I’ve written before about how addictive I find TV and how I wanted to cut down on how much I’ve watched. For the most part, I have. Still, I struggle with turning on the TV as an easy out when I could be something more constructive, or even more enjoyable.

So, I’ve decided April would be it. I’m not sure I’ll give it up forever. I hope that after this month I’ll have it out of my system and better habits in place, so it’s no longer a temptation. But perhaps I’ll be able to add it back in, more moderately. For right now, I’m just planning on giving it up for this month and we’ll see what happens when it’s over.

I am giving myself the exception of sporting events. I mean, I wouldn’t want to give up tonight’s national championship or this weekend’s Masters tournament. And I’ll still watch the occasional movie. Thankfully, I’m cheap so renting a movie isn’t much of a draw.

I don’t know what that means for my April. I do know I’ll do more reading (though I probably would have done so anyway, thanks to the 24-hour Readathon later this month). Maybe I’ll be more active, too, taken advantage of the lovely spring weather.

I’m looking forward to it. Sometimes it just takes cutting something out of your life to realize you didn’t really want it there, anyway.

I just can’t believe that people are all up in arms about Limbaugh’s “slut” comment.

Not because what he said wasn’t insensitive; it was. But have these people that are so angry at Rush ever listened to his show? He makes his bread and butter by being insensitive and spewing barb-filled rhetoric. There’s just not anything particularly special about these latest comments that, in mind is more (or less!) insensitive and unhelpful.

Now that we’ve opened the can of worms, what are my thoughts?

Well, I am a single woman that has used birth control for medical reasons. I actually know many women that are prescribed birth control for therapeutic reasons, not because they’re necessarily using it to prevent pregnancy.

When I was first prescribed these pills, I was shocked at how expensive they were with my insurance. I could get a month’s worth of each of my other prescriptions for $10 or less, but my birth control would have been $35 a month (for 24 pills) if I hadn’t had a coupon lowering it to $24. Which, with the excellent insurance coverage I had at the time, still seemed high for a fairly routine medication.

I don’t know why they are so expensive after insurance. I can only assume that they were treated differently by my insurance company because they’re not seen has medically necessary, even when they are. Was I prescribed these pills because I was a “slut”? Of course not.

I would love for my insurance to have to cover these pills at least to the same level they cover my other medications, if only for a selfish, money-saving reason.

But, do I think that religious institutions that take issue with the use of birth control be required to pay for it for their employees? Absolutely not.

I personally have a problem with using birth control pills as birth control. If I were married (and thus sexually active), I would work with my doctor to get off of birth control pills or use an alternative birth control method to prevent the pills from having any possible abortive effect.

So, yes, I understand why a religious institution with similar beliefs would not want to fund birth control pills. I believe that this is perfectly within their rights as a religious institution in this country. They are not preventing their employees from using birth control, only declining to subsidize its use.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” is a right guaranteed by our constitution. Having someone else pay for your health care, is not. When you go to work for a place, you can’t expect that they will condone or support your choices when they do not align with their beliefs.

At this point, you might wonder why I’m asserting that I have a “moderate voice.” Perhaps I do lean a little bit to the right, and I’m okay with being accused of doing so. But here is what I have to say to Rush Limbaugh and his type: stop calling names. No argument, from the playground to the Supreme Court, has ever been won by calling the other person names. A civil, reasonable discussion will never happen if we resort to name calling and raising our voices.

Of course, the same First Amendment that guarantees the free expression of religion also gives you freedom of speech. So go ahead. But just don’t be surprised if we ignore you as irrelevant and unhelpful.

Television isn’t evil. But it’s also certainly not essential and rarely constructive. Reading a book isn’t always especially constructive either, but there is still greater value in reading junk than in watching junk. Not that I usually read junk…but most of what I watch would be qualified as “junk.”

Why do I struggle with watching too much TV?

1. It’s easy. You know that. You probably watch more than you want to, too. Watching television requires almost nothing of me.

2. It sucks you in. If there is one show that want to watch, it’s easy to turn the entire evening into a TV-watching binge.

3. I am, if only in part, a product of my culture. I have grown up with technology and stimulation. To sit silently in a room with a book that does not interact with me isn’t as easy as it may have been for someone who had books as their only form of entertainment.

4. I like the noise. Being single, my apartment is usually silent unless I choose to make it otherwise. I don’t always have to have noise, but I do prefer it to silence. I have taken to listening to audiobooks while I do my chores around my house, but some activities (like reading and sending emails) don’t allow me enough brain power to also listen to an audio book, so sometimes I turn on the TV. Enter point #2.

So what am I going to do about it?

I wrote this post last week and just left the question hang there for a couple of days. I really didn’t know how to answer it. But Friday afternoon I decided not to turn on the TV all weekend. And I didn’t (well, except to listen to audiobooks on my DVD player). I had a great weekend, too. Instead of watching TV and whiling away the hours, I listened to one whole audio book, crocheted a lot, and took care of a few chores around the apartment. The time didn’t drag, but it also didn’t fly by. It was quite pleasant.

I want that to be the norm in my apartment, not the other. I’m not giving up TV completely, but I’d like to cut my viewing to just a few hours a week.

Next project: working on silence.

I really enjoyed working the election yesterday. The people I worked with were fun, and I enjoyed working to get people in and out as quickly and efficiently as possible.

We had about 27% turn out at our precinct, though there was only 21% turnout county wide. It was a municipal election so those aren’t bad numbers, but it’s sad to say that. Personally, I find the municipal elections to have more relevance to my life than national ones, you know?

Even sadder than those numbers is the fact that I only met 2 others who live in my complex, and I personally dealt with at least 1/3 of the voters who came through. So if we extrapolate that, we’d have to guess that maybe 9 people from my complex came through. Out of at least 100 possible voters (probably more than that), that’s absolutely horrible.

One of the people I helped was actually a candidate for school board, a candidate that I just voted for about an hour prior. She commended me on handling my job appropriately and told me a horror story of something that happened in another precinct the year before. That was before I realized she was a candidate who had a vested interest.

I’ll definitely be working elections again, Lord willing. It was an exhausting day, but we get paid okay, and honestly, I’d do it for free. Our next elections are in May (primary and constitutional amendment) and November, which both promise to have much higher turnouts.

Sense and Sensibility is both my favorite Jane Austen book and my favorite movie. I love Pride and Prejudice along with the best of us, but Sense and Sensibility resonates more with me, because I relate to both of the sisters.

I’m a lot like Elinor, the put-together, sensible, putting-others-first rock of the family. To those who don’t know me well, I can come across as stoic or unfeeling. I tend towards order and routine and tend to shy away from spontaneity and anything that upsets my order for things.

But I also am a lot like Marianne. I can be flighty and overly emotional. I cry quicker than anyone I know (though I still blame it on a physical abnormality…doncha know I have overactive tear ducts?). I have thought my world was falling apart when a suitor hasn’t appeared. I have interpreted my interactions with a man to make them into something they weren’t.

You see, I’m both sisters. I can be both sensible and overcome by sensibility.

And for the record, Colonel Brandon is by far my favorite of the Jane Austen’s heroes. A man who doesn’t arrogantly assume you think he’s all that, prefers you to be happy than to be with him (as much as it pains him), and is willing to quietly serve in whatever way possible? Yes, please!

Actually, several of the books that I want to be made into movies are in the process of being turned into movies. While it used to be important to me that movies reflect the books perfectly, I’ve since realized it makes more sense for the them not to be exactly the same. After all, what makes a book good and what makes a movie good aren’t the same things.

So, these are books I want to see made into movies (or movies that I’m looking forward to seeing):

1. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

I’ve wanted to see a movie of Ender’s Game ever since I read it for the first time. I think that it has the makings of a very good movie that would have mass popularity. Card has/is writing a script for it, but I’m not sure it’s gone much farther than that.

2. Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden

Okay, so this is already a movie…in Australia (where it did well). No word on whether it will be released in the US in the theaters or on DVD.

3. The City and the City by China Miévelle

I think this would be a fascinated movie, if someone could pull it off. Having two cities overlapping–and yet you’re only allowed to “see” your own city–would possibly require some Inception-like visuals.

4. The Journal by…well…me

Wouldn’t that be absolutely cool? A girl can dream. But seriously, it could make a great movie I think. I love futuristic movies, and this would definitely be one.

5. Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

If you like Hunger Games at all, you’ve likely heard that this is going to be a movie. The casting of the main characters has just been released, so it’ll still be a while. I think that it makes for a great story for film, but it’d be hard to not to make it gory.

6. Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

A great story that’d make for a great kids’ movie.

7. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Based on this list, I think I need to watch more sci-fi movies. I love seeing other people’s imaginations at work in how they create a future society.

8. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

If this would be as touching a story on film as it is in print, I’d love to see it happen.

9. C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy

Why not follow up The Chronicles of Narnia with Lewis’s lesser-known fiction series? There are some really poignant points in the books that I’d love to see on film, though I don’t think it’d make for very popular movies as the books aren’t nearly as action-packed and suspense-filled as most alien movies out there.

10. The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

This series, on the other hand, would make for an action-packed alien movie.

Would you/do you want to see any of these movies?

And I realize that by saying that right there, I may have convinced a good number of my readers to ignore this post. That’s okay…I’m really wanting to speak with those who would agree with that statement.

Why? Because I have a problem with the House GOP (or anyone else) wanting to cut Planned Parenthood funding.

Say what?

Look, I don’t like Planned Parenthood any more than you do. When I see one, my first response is to pray for the young ladies seeking their services. I don’t want them using my money (or my very small share of the federal money) to encourage or perform abortions. That prohibition, I believe, should be spelled out in law.

However, that’s not all Planned Parenthood does.

Sadly, conservatives and Christians in recent times in America have by and large done a bad job of helping the poor. I’ll even admit that I’ve done a bad job of helping the poor. Still thinking through what that should look like in my life, but I know that I’m far from off the hook.

So, sadly, I can’t support the complete denial of federal funding to Planned Parenthood. Until someone else steps up and offers gynecological exams and pregnancy care to low-income women, it’d be better for them to receive these services from someone with an agenda radically different than mine than to not get them at all.

That’s my two cents…what’s yours?

This post is to all of my faithful readers who were itching for me to tackle a controversial subject again. I think this time I’ve definitely stepped in it!

This post is not intended to point fingers at anyone in particular but to share a troubling trend I’ve noticed. I’ve already shared how I struggle with trying to control every aspect of my life. So understand that I write this post knowing I share in the guilt, a guilt that should be no less troubling just because it’s common to many.

It amazes me how incredibly arrogant we modern Americans are. We think that we have the right to control our bodies, from removing wrinkles or adding curves to determining exactly when we conceive and with how many babies.

It’s not uncommon for a couple to spend years using birth control pills then turn around and use fertility drugs to conceive, something that their bodies may have been able to do without medical help before they subjected them to years of artificial hormones.

Perhaps–I’m saying this as a single virgin who wants kids, so maybe my opinion doesn’t count–we should let God determine these details.

I’m not necessarily against birth control methods–there are wise means and good motives to do so–but we have to understand that there are consequences to the decisions we make. If I say, “I don’t want to get pregnant until ________,” I have to recognize that God may not allow me to conceive when I’m good and ready.  After all, it is still God who opens and closes wombs, not a fertility pill or injection.

That’s my two cents on this issue. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts in the comments.

Photo by hitthatswitch

The research in The Millennials supports that idea.  We’re impatient because we know life is short.  We’re family-oriented because we understand what it’s like to lose them.  We believe in respect to all ideas and those who espouse them, because we see what happens when you’re intolerant.  We hate the “us” vs. “them” mentality.

While my generation (born 1980-2000) is now the largest ever in American history, we’re still coming into our own.  The youngest are still only 10 years old, and the oldest are only 30.  So while I believe our foundation is set, time will tell what our legacy will be.

There are many things I find positive about my generation–our desire to help others and our distaste for polarizing rhetoric–but other things I find concerning, like our desire to have everything now and our disinterest in religion altogether.

How will we be remembered?